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October 01, 2010

Free Motion Quilt Along: Pebbles

Pebbles get people excited. Are you excited? Sweet. Let's start by putting into pictures what I tried to say in words. Pebbling step by step.

Stitch a circle/oval

Now, starting where your first circle ended, stitch another circle kissing that one.

Continue around that circle to get to a place where you can start a third one. Try and make the third circle touch both the other circles.

Whenever you end up "trapped" somewhere you can't start a new circle, just follow along where you've already stitched to get to where you want to go.

And so on.

The secret is out - pebbling is just circles!

It's like all I have is white fabric and white thread. I should get some sort of quilting blogger fine for this kind of behavior.

Ready to try pebbles? Sure you are! This week we are going to fill one of the medium strips on the quilt with pebbling. I chose a strip on the end. I started with a basic pebble.

Then I squared it off. I liked the effect, kind of like cobblestones.

I tried lengthening the pebbles. It came out so so. I'm not gonna marry it.

Then my machine did exactly what it did before I paid $250 to stop it from doing that. And I switched machines while muttering crabby things to myself. Very, very crabby things.

And I did some practice stitching to get back into my groove with Mattie.

And I tried "stuff in pebbles". LOVE the beach balls.

You may be able to see a little tuck developed on one of my edge pebbles, which is a risk both of stitching at the edge of the quilt, and of circular designs. You're less likely to have this problem if your design is a bit ahead on the outside edge than the inside - these tucks always happen for me when I'm "filling in" along the edge. I'm certainly enjoying running my hand over that pebble quilting though! So have fun with pebbles everyone! Then show them off in the Flickr group.

I would like to share with you some photos: if you've got a time of course to look at it:) Right in the middle of this post there are some quils with pebbles (I took this photos this year on Prague Patchwork Meeting):http://jednoiglec.blox.pl/2010/04/Prague-Patchwork-Meeting-2010.html

I love your photos and experimentation. Used pebbles on one of my last twin size quilts - it was great - but - uses a ton of thread!! I was reloading the bobbin a lot. You are much better at only going around circles once - I seemed to have to go around twice. Will work on that. Thanks for your posts!!

Here it is October 2013 and i am very new to quilting. I have worked my way through this tutorial and it's going great. Thanks so much Christina - I'm improving with each lesson. All of you who took part in this - your comments and photos are so helpful ! I'm moving through about 2 lessons every night!